


Never Give Up

by AConstanceC



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: ..Stuff??, Angst, Danger, Discovery, Gen, Mystery, Origin Story, Pre-Series, Sort Of, hidden past, i don't actually know what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 12:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11920965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AConstanceC/pseuds/AConstanceC
Summary: But this was important, not only to her but to everyone, the whole world, and she would never let it go. Not when she was this close to finding out the truth, two years worth of work. She would find out who, and where her father was; it was for her, and him, to stop hiding and show the world what was really going on and what they were capable of.





	Never Give Up

**Author's Note:**

> Once again I'm posting an old fic that's already on ff.  
> I'm not quite sure where this came from but let me know what you think...
> 
> No, I don't own anything and all mistakes are my own.

Pain, whether mental or physical, is your body telling your mind to give up, to stop; but that doesn’t mean you have to listen to it.

So she didn’t.

Fingers, legs and everything just hurt and burned like hell but never did she give up. Not when she ran into dead ends, not when leads went cold, not when everything was destroyed, not even when she had to run for her life.

Never did she truly give up.

There were moments where she almost had, where she would sit and cry for hours on the bathroom floor; appalled and sickened by what she had learnt. Or when she sat with her back to the front door, trying desperately to catch her breath because she just ran for 20 minutes straight because she thought someone was following her.

But this was important, not only to her but to everyone, the whole world, and she would never let it go. Not when she was this close to finding out the truth, two years worth of work. She would find out who, and where her father was; it was for her, and him, to stop hiding and show the world what was really going on and what they were capable of.

She remembers that he left them when she was young; she barely remembers anything more about him other than that. Just like that one day he left, out of the blue, no reason, no note, and no answers to why? She woke up one morning and found her mother crying downstairs sat at the kitchen table, all she kept saying over and over again was “he left, he’s gone, he’s not coming back” That day Felicity didn’t go to school, she stayed at home to be with her mother; comfort her in any way she could. Even at such a young age Felicity was always kind and understanding towards others; could brighten any situation no matter how bad it was. But even her spirit or the bright pink kitchen walls could cheer her mother up. That was the first day in a string that could almost destroy Felicity.

After her dad left her mother had to work longer shifts so that they had enough money to buy food. Even then it was cheap, minimal and usually well past its sell buy date or leftovers from her mum’s work; in the end she learned to look after herself, to never ask her mother for anything unless she absolutely needed it – she even learnt to shoplift and later card count. No child should have to do that – except she did, all because of him.

Over the next few years Felicity stupidly kept asking her mother about her father. Her limited memories were already slipping away and she desperately tried to cling onto something, anything about him. All her mother said to her when she asked was “No. Not today.” The haunted, distant, hurt look in her mother’s eyes gave everything away though. One particular night, a few years after he left, Felicity found her mother lying on the settee in the middle of the night screaming in her sleep. Fear laced her mother’s voice as she whispered his name. Freezing on the spot in the doorway Felicity felt a single tear drip down her face, she wiped it away with her fingertips and slowly turned back around and quietly walked back to her room. Once there she let the breath she was holding go and slipped into a dreamless, restless sleep – she would no longer care about the man who was her father.

After that she never asked about him again and that night was never mentioned, not even thought about. Whenever her father was brought up by someone both Donna and Felicity immediately closed off and walked away with some excuse claiming that they had to get to work or school. Felicity, at 14, vowed that she would forget about the man that was her father and continued on with her life – never letting him hold her down or define her.

She kept that vow for years. Never looking for him and just focusing on the important things: school, university and eventually getting a job (and then an unexpected night job).

But despite her vow, years later, she couldn’t ignore it anymore; she needed to know. Felicity had always said that she hated mysteries – but this used to be the one mystery she didn’t want to solve. However once she started to piece everything together she couldn’t stop. She knew she should have but she couldn’t resist. All the crime fighting had made her stronger and more willing to chase after the truth, to get justice. But she didn’t want anyone to know what she was doing, dragging them into this would distract them and she couldn’t be responsible for one of them getting hurt. So, everything she learnt she kept to herself, all the pain and the rumours of what her father truly was.

Three years after she first started looking for her father Felicity sat frozen at her laptop in her bedroom, fingers held suspended in the air, trembling violently. The same sentences kept running through her mind and invading her every thought.

She should have left it alone.

She should have known better that to look for him.

Never should she have gone this deep.

Now everyone around her was in danger – danger that they had never seen nor heard of before.

She knew what she had to do. There was only one thing she could do. Erase it all and hope no one had seen her poking around. That she could just erase all trace of her hacks and forget all about it. She had to wipe everything clean so no one would ever know that she was there. She dismantled and burned anything that could lead back to her, all her hacks, research, data and tech. She even wrote an entirely new security programme for her new computer system. No one was going to mess with Felicity Smoak or her friends– not even her own father.


End file.
